During the three-day conference of Oracle Openworld, JavaOne 2017, the participation project LightSculpture was born.The portrait of the visitors was cut out in a fluorescent acrylic glass and then inserted into the sculpture.In total, around 350 visitors attended.

Six CNC routers are cutting and etching faces into fluorescent acrylic while German artist Mirja Wellmann watches nearby. A woman admiring Wellmann’s sculpture gushes, “It’s beautiful! It’s like if you have talent, there are no limits!” Nearby, four flavors of microbrewed beer are perfected with data from IoT sensors. Oracle OpenWorld 2017 attendees rate the brews on touch screens. Others assemble colorful furniture made from 3D-printed beams designed by Java expert Michael Hoffer. Adorable robots intrigue passers-by. Welcome to Oracle’s annual Developer Lounge.

Merging Art and Technology

For the creatively inclined, there’s a thrilling implication behind the Developer Lounge: Artists are in demand to find new ways to incorporate such elements as CNC routers, 3D printers, IoT sensors, robotics, and cloud-native intelligence into novel experiences.That’s how Wellmann sees it. The sculptor and sound artist who conceived of the interactive art at the last two annual conferences, she is all smiles as she notes how much she enjoys working with people—most of her installations are collaborative.Using facial recognition technology, the faces of attendees who pose for a photo by Wolf Helzle, Wellmann’s social media artist husband, are plotted for cutting on the CNC routers, then glued to a series of glowing Lucite slabs. “I wanted to do the portrait of the attendees like a flying abstract form—a flock,” she says.

Though she has no technology background, Wellmann began using cutting machines to help build enormous wooden forms. Now, she’s optimistic that companies like Oracle will need people like her and her husband to put technology to creative use: “For me, I’m really lucky because [this collaboration means] I can do things that by myself I can’t.”